Sean Thomas is a novelist, journalist and travel writer. He also publishes thrillers under the name Tom Knox. He is currently writing a memoir of his extremely misspent youth, and similarly misspent adulthood, and tweets under the name @thomasknox.

The developing world has turned Thatcherite. No wonder it's overtaking us

Mrs Thatcher is becoming a god. Just like Roman Emperors, when they died, she is being elevated to the Pantheon by her superstitious subjects.

Already she is being cursed by the Left for things that never happened, even as she is lauded by Right-wingers for the same miraculous events. These are clearly the attributes of a deity. There are probably citizens in some particularly remote, benighted part of her imperium, like Primrose Hill, where they are blaming her for the weather. Or “climate change”, as they call it in their barbarian tongue.

However, while it is amusing, from a psychosocial perspective, to see a person elevated to divine status, especially when the most fearful idolators are liberal-Left atheists writing in The Guardian, there is one myth surrounding our new goddess that needs nailing.

This is the idea that the great recession of the last five years proves that capitalism has “failed” – and therefore that Mrs Thatcher, economically, was wrong.

Is capitalism in crisis? Check some global figures. China is the world’s largest country; it constitutes a fifth of humanity. Here are China’s percentage growth rates for the last five years: 9.6, 9.2, 10.4, 9.2, 8.2. Yes, in the peak year of the “crisis” the Chinese economy slowed to a pitiful, er, 9.2 per cent. This year it is expected to grow at 8 per cent.

Put it another way: China is still growing so fast its economy will overtake America’s, in overall size, in about 2016 – according to the OECD. This is important because there are more Chinese than there are westerners in total. And China has experienced no crisis whatsoever.

But maybe the Middle Kingdom, and Future Global Hegemon, is an exception?

No. During the worst of the “crisis”, India, with its vast population of 1.2 billion, grew by 4 per cent. In 2012 it grew by 6.7 per cent. As for Indonesia (population 250 million) it managed 4.5 per cent growth in 2008, and posted 6 per cent in 2012. Meanwhile, down in Nigeria (population 162 million) they recorded growth of 8.2 per cent, as of last year.

These are the facts, not the myths. Across the world, there has been no crisis of capitalism. Indeed, in the last 30 years, more human beings have been raised from poverty than in any previous period in our planet’s history: and it is capitalism, in a particularly virile form, which has done this.

In which case, why is everyone so bloody miserable? Answer: they aren’t, except in Europe. Because what we are actually experiencing is a crisis of European social democracy, and a boom in bad debt racked up reckless EU governments, and their citizens. The rest of the world is doing just fine, it’s us guys here who are in trouble.

Our postwar welfare state, as we know it, is finished. And the death blow has been dealt by the sudden arrival of more ruthless competitors like China. Competitors who, ironically, adopted the low tax, sound money, free market tenets of Mrs Margaret Thatcher (peace be upon her).

How we save ourselves from this mess is another question. Perhaps we should pray to the gods for help.